Update: Giant $500M Chinese VR Theme Park Opens Doors to the Public

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A giant robot looms over the outskirts of Guiyang, the capital of Guizhou province in China. The new VR park, named simply ‘Oriental Science Fiction Valley‘, has now opened its doors; within them reside a bevy of VR attractions and rides that hope to capitalize on China’s steadily growing VR industry.

Contrary to the Reuters report, the CGTN report contends the park is in fact the result of a ¥3B (~$470M USD) investment and not the previously reported $1.5B USD investment. We’ve corrected the headline and clarified the original article which follows below.

Original article (11/27/17): As reported by Reuters, the massive VR park spans 330 acres (134 hectares) and houses within its various sci-fi-inspired buildings 35 different VR attractions—including everything from shooters, virtual roller coasters, to guided spaceship tours of the region’s most scenic spots.

image courtesy Reuters

image courtesy Reuters

image courtesy Reuters

Its organizers have already spent $1.5 billion $470 million creating the park, and while it features a few non-VR attractions such as bungee jumping (from the arm of the robot), most rides will use some combination of VR headsets and motion platforms.

Occupying one of the poorest provinces in China, the park aims to revitalize the area when it partially opens February next year.

Has anyone been to this yet? It looks like it’s open, just wondering if we can get an informal review. My GF has been wanting me to visit China with her for a while, just wondering if it’s worth going out out our way to check out. Looks potentially cool as hell.

LowRezSkyline

Ok my GF was able to dig around some Chinese websites and apparently this isn’t open to the public yet. She says they say it will be open in December of this year so very soon.

Jomandaman

The article says it opens “partially” in February

brubble

The only decent thing that’s come out of China is the jian bing.

Bryan Ischo

I dunno, paper is pretty cool too.

Andrew Jakobs

And explosives…

Thetrick

Really? Every other country is pretty happy to use gun powder. It has been pretty useful for generation. I’m sure at somepoint in your life you have had something made out of silk. China made that too.

Johnny Daniel Sanchez Vanegas

Looks more like propaganda or concept footage rather than an already open to public venue

cubehouse

The Chinese website is a fun game of “spot the art stolen from other properties”.

You do realize that many of these properties in return stole ideas from even older properties from other countries around the world. The U.S. are not the only one with scifi series. They own the most famous ones you know about and with their power they make you believe that they are the only ones who had those ideas but in reality many scifi series around the world are similar in many ways and some even older, only not as popular in the U.S.

cubehouse

Sure. But there is a huge difference between being similar and using unmodified copyrighted imagery from other companies to promote your own work.

Stealing promotional images from other companies gives an incorrect impression of what they’re offering, and also rides off the back of other companies legit success.

Taking inspiration from existing media is fine, that’s expected and how things should and do work. However here they have stolen existing marketing material straight from other products and used it without modification for their own publicity. If I see the Death Star or The Terminator featured in publicity images, this gives the product a huge boost in (incorrectly) assumed legitimacy. It is wrong and lies to your consumers.

brubble

Well at least scores of people won’t be killed from shoddy ride construction flaws. Everything will be a half assed rip off.

Thetrick

You one of them anti-china bots? Go back to twitter.

brubble

Sure am! I lived there for an extended period, the country was built on a lie.

UnpopularPuffin

Read the WIPO, they had more patents than the next 3 countries combined.

brubble

HA! So you think the number of patents speaks for an entire country’s integrity? Again, go live there and attempt some business dealings, or even invest your money in Chinese companies and see how that pans out for you down the road. FWIW many of my close xpat friends who were also living there hold the same sentiments.

Thetrick

I made 10k on a one day business deal in china. They got a powerful economy that pushes innovation far more than any other economy in the world. I don’t know in what business dealings you are involve in but my investments in China have paid off well, better than my investments in the U.S. where companies care less about innovation and care more about image and fast cash.

They must be using the Vive Pro (since it has comercial grade parts). But since the cost of the park is now down to only half a billion, I doubt they could afford more then two or three headsets. (The lines must be insane)

Andrew Jakobs

As you can see in the video, they are NOT the vive pro.

NooYawker

I think many commercial VR attractions are using StarVR

Andrew Jakobs

Why again not just a new article, and link to the original article. This is getting annoying lately.

But the park is great for those people.

Miqa

I like that they keep articles updated. There is always a note about it at the top, so you know if you’ve already read the original one.

NooYawker

Everything looks dusty, like concrete dust.

brubble

I wonder how long this park will survive….I guess until a crowd of people get killed from the giant robot, or structure…or ride collapsing.